Paris Trout (16 page)

"How were we perceived?" she said.

He shrugged. "Married."

He looked at her in a way that had appealed to her
once. Plain spoken and out of words. There was a time when he would
find himself at the end of the things he knew and then suddenly stop,
in awkward places, because he could not say the things he felt.

It had appealed to her, but that was before she had
glimpsed the things he felt. And the things he didn't. His dark side
had fastened itself to her sexually in the abstract, and then she had
seen it uncovered, and it was nothing like what she had imagined. It
was only ugly.

"
I will not associate myself with what you have
done," she said.

"
Nobody said to. You don't have to admit nothing
except we're married. This is the wrong time for you to disappear."

"
The store? You want me back in the store?"

"
For appearances."

She felt a drop of water moving down her back, the
only movement in the room. "I want you out of the house,"
she said.

He looked at her as if this were an old, tired
argument.

She said, "I will not stay here under the same
roof."

"
It"s my roof."

"
Then I'll move," she said. "I'll sue
for divorce and for the money you took. I will testify in court what
you did with your bottle of I mineral water."

She saw she had gone too far. He rose up and came for
her across the room. She would not let herself run. There was a flat
look to his face; decisions had been made over on the bed, and he was
now the messenger.

He slapped her in the same place he had slapped her
before. She was standing this time, offering him more leverage. It
was more painful, because she understood right away what it was, but
the thing she noticed most was the weight. All the things she had
read in Raymond Chandler's books about being hit, he'd never
mentioned how heavy it felt.

She fell backwards into the wall, and it was not
over. He came at her from the same side, and she held up her hands
and turned away. His hand crossed the plane of her arms and found her
again, but something in the turning away took the weight off the
blow. Her eyes watered and her hands dropped to her sides, and she
said it again. "I want you out."

He grabbed the front of her robe and pulled her into
his face. She looked into the gaps between his teeth. She thought of
the places she had meant to go in her life. Los Angeles. For some
reason, it felt as if it were too late to see Los Angeles now.

Without meaning to, she began to cry.

He held the front of her robe a moment longer and
then pushed her a few inches away and studied her face. She tried to
turn her head, but the collar of her robe was tight under her chin
and ears now and prevented it.

The words came from behind the teeth, someplace in
the dark. "That's better," he said.

She did not answer; she was no longer sure she could
talk.

"
There ain't nobody moving out of this house
now," the words said, "least of all me. When this other is
solved, then you're free to go where you want."

He dropped his hand and her robe fell open all the
way to her knees.

"Until then," he said, "what goes on
in this house stays in this house."

Something in that nudged her. She covered herself,
thinking that for as long as she had known him, Paris Trout had never
cared for anyone's good opinion.

"
I will not have this," she said. Her voice
was watered and uneven.

And he suddenly turned reasonable.

"You should of
thought of that before," he said.

* * *

HE LEFT THE House an hour later; she watched him from
her window.

Four hours later she saw him return. He arrived in a
truck with the words "Mims's Hardware" written across the
door. He and the Negro who drove it over got out together and opened
the back end. The driver put on gloves and then climbed in. Paris
stood on the street, waiting to receive what was inside. He was
wearing gloves too, although she had not seen him put them on.

In a moment he reached into the truck and then backed
up slowly, pausing between his steps. He appeared to be carrying
something heavy, but then he cleared the doors of the truck, and
there was nothing in his hands.

He took another step back and then another. She saw
the Negro's boots then beneath the truck doors, carefully finding the
street. He cleared the truck, and she saw he was carrying the other
end. There was nothing between them.

The thought came to her that Paris had gone to the
state hospital and found himself a companion.

The men turned, keeping exactly the same distance
apart. She saw it was glass a moment before it caught the reflection
of the late-afternoon sun. They maneuvered themselves through he gate
— the Negro opened it with his foot — — and then up the walk to
the porch. The Negro backed the whole way, losing his balance once
but correcting himself in time to save the window. Paris stood
behind, red-faced, with his cheek pressed into the glass, grunting
with each step.

The Negro arrived at the top of the stairs and
stopped. "It's left open, sir?"

Paris grunted. The driver set his end of the glass on
the porch floor and turned to try the door. "It ain't open,"
he said.

"
The key's in my pocket," Paris said.

She watched the Negro step off the porch and put his
hands in Paris's front pocket. He came out with a key ring, it could
have weighed five pounds. She thought Paris must have saved every key
he ever had.

"Where does a man start?" the Negro said.

"
Two square ones, right together," he said.
"These here?"

"No, square ones. One's old, one's shiny."

The Negro went through the keys slowly and finally
found the ones to the front door. "Which?" he said.

"
The shiny one opens the top."

He went back up the porch stairs, out of her sight.
Then she heard the door open downstairs and the sounds of them coming
in. "Two locks on the door," the Negro was saying. "They
ain't two locks on the bank ....You must of got somethin' in here,
all right."

At the bottom of the stairs they set the glass down
again. "Heavy, ain't it?" the Negro said.

"
It goes upstairs," Paris said.

The Negro came halfway up and stopped on the landing
between floors. "Whoever come up first," he said, "they
got to lean way over to here, let the other one to past this
banister."

He came the rest of the way up and opened Paris's
bedroom door, which was directly across the hall from the top step of
the stairs. He returned to the glass, descending the stairs more
slowly than he'd come up.

"
There ain't no broke glass in that room, sir,"
he said.

"It ain't for now, it's for later."

Hanna sat in the chair near the window and listened
to them negotiate the glass up the stairs. They set it down inside
Paris's room, and when they came out, they were breathing hard and
blowing. "The other seven goes up here too?" the driver
said.

She did not hear Paris answer.

The driver said, "I ain't said there's nothing
wrong with it, no sir. You know how much glass you need better than
me."

They went back out to the truck and got the next
piece of glass. And then the next. She watched for most of an hour,
and when she saw none of the glass was going to be dropped, she left
the window, opened a novel called The Big Sleep, and began to read.

Except for the grunting and their feet on the stairs,
the men worked in silence. The Negro did all the backing up, Paris
followed him into the house and up the stairs. When they had
finished, it was almost dark.

"That be the last one," the Negro said.

Paris did not answer.

"
Lawdy, look at the time," the Negro said.
"I been on the job two hours plus my regular duty."

Paris did not answer.

"Mr. Mims don't pay me over the time."

"
How much does he pay you, regular duty?"
she heard Paris ask.

"
Forty dollars."

"
That's a good dollar," Paris said. '°More
money than that, it just get you in trouble."

It was quiet a moment, and then the Negro said, "No
sir, that's spendin' money, that don't get peoples in trouble. What
done that is money they saved. That's the kind make them evil."

"
I'll call Mr. Mims tomorrow, tell him to divest
his savings," Paris said.

"
No sir, you doesn't has to do that."

"
You already told him, did you?"

"
No sir, I don't tell Mr. Mims nothing."

"
And that right there," Paris said, "is
how you stayed out of trouble."

She heard the door open
and looked out her window in time to see the Negro walking to the
truck. His gloves were in his back pocket. He got in without as much
as a glance backwards and drove away. Of course, all he'd lost to
Paris Trout was two hours.

* * *

THIRTY MINUTES AFTER THE Negro left, Paris began the
hammering. It was more of a tapping when she got used to it, and she
realized he was not driving the nails all the way in. Still, it shook
the floor and rattled the bottles on the dresser where she kept her
perfume and
jewelry.

The tapping went on late into the night, and she lay
in her bed, listening, trying to imagine what he was doing. Nothing
came to mind.

She woke in the morning to the sound of the front
door slamming shut and moved to her window. She saw Paris had slept
in his clothes — if he'd slept at all — — and hadn't changed
them before he left. He walked in a stiff way to the gate and then
down the sidewalk in the direction of town.

She stayed at the window a few minutes longer, making
sure he was gone, and then went to the end of the hall and tried the
door to his room. It was not locked — not even completely shut —
and it cracked open at the first touch of her hand. She paused,
suddenly afraid he was  somehow inside, waiting for her. Then
she pushed the rest of the way in and was momentarily blind.

The floor was covered with glass. The sun came in
through the east window, gathered itself in a spot about halfway
across the floor, and met her at the doorway. She squinted and moved
a few steps inside. The spot seemed to move with her, keeping between
her and the window.

She crossed the room carefully, testing each step,
feeling the warm glass on the soles of her feet. At the window she
turned back and surveyed the floor. The sheets of glass were fitted
flush against the walls. Lines of tenpenny nails, spaced two to an
inch, had been driven to the floor at the edges, keeping the glass in
place.

The glass covered the perimeter of the floor. He had
moved his bed way from the wall, and it sat in the middle of the room
now, in the only space that was not covered. The legs of the bed each
sat in a rubber overshoe. The hammer and a can of nails lay in the
corner near the loset, beside an open, half-eaten can of cling
peaches. She looked back toward the doorway and saw her footprints on
the glass.

She left the room as carefully as she had entered it
and hurried downstairs into the kitchen. She found ammonia under the
sink and put that and some dish powder into a small pail and filled
it with water. She picked up a sponge and a dish towel and went back.

She left the pail outside his door and went to her
own room for a pair of socks. The ones she found first were Christmas
socks, a present from a time so far removed it could have been
something she'd read about. Dark green socks with little red Santas
tumbling up and down the sides.

The tops came all the way to her knees.

She returned to the room, in her nightgown and her
socks, and began working on the far corner of the floor. The ammonia
made her eyes water, the glare of the sun caught her from unexpected
angles as she backed herself and the pail toward the door.

When she had come about halfway, she turned around,
and with the sun behind her, she saw it was not ordinary glass. It
was thicker than windowpanes, and it did not wipe clean. It had
seemed to, but as the glass dried, the footprints reappeared.

She began again, scrubbing
harder, checking her work from different sides as she moved back
toward the hall. It took most of an hour, and when she had finished,
she stood in the doorway and saw that all the signs that she had been
in the room were erased.

* * *

PARIS RETURNED LATE IN the afternoon and went
directly upstairs. She heard him open the door and stop. She did not
breathe until she heard him move again, farther into the room.

He went in. Then he came out, stopping at the doorway
to look down the hall. She knew he was looking in her direction. The
urine smell came back to her as fresh as if he were standing in her
bedroom. He went back down the stairs, taking them slowly, and then
into the kitchen. She heard the first breaking noise two minutes
later. A deep pop, perhaps a jar of mayonnaise on the floor.